Paris - Day 8

We grabbed a quick bit to eat in the hotel lobby before our trek back to the airport. Catching the metro proved to be relatively easy and I was getting more and more irritated by Kansas City's lack of a rail system.

The check-in for our return flight seemed to go a little better than process we endured to/from Italy. We quickly boarded the plane and were on our way back home. Flying to Dallas instead of Chicago made for a much longer return as evident by the screening of three movies as opposed to the two we saw on the way there.

The Dallas airport, while very nice and clean, only fueled my hatred for Texas. After going through customs and collected our luggage, we were greeted with a huge line to exit the international baggage area so that we could catch our return flight. I'd never been in a situation where I had to run to catch a plane before. Lucky for me, Kyle's desire to get back home had her right on my heals. We managed to make the flight as they were getting ready to close the door and found our seats. An uneventful flight and we were back in Kansas City; safe and sound.

Paris - Day 7

Feeding off of yesterday's successful subway ride from the airport, we decided to press our luck and take the metro up to Montmartre. Located north of the city, Montmartre is home to Sacre Coeur. From its hilltop location, we were able to a spectacular view of Paris. Unfortunatelyy, the morning haze had not yet lifted, so ourpicturess did not turn out so well.

After wondering around the Montmartre area looking for the Salvador Dalimuseumm to no avail, we decided to metro down to the Champs-Elysees. In an effort to save our tired feet we decided to take the subway down to the far end of the Champs' and walk back towards the Louvre. When we arrived at the Arch de Triomphe, the upper platform was closed to visitors but would be opening again in less than an hour. To kill some time we hit McDonalds.

Returning to the Arch, we were greeted with a good sized line of folks waiting to climb to the top.Safetyy note: there is no elevator to get to the top of the Arch, you must take the stairs. After a painful climb to the top, we were treated to a tremendous view of the city.

looking towards Montmartre

Walking along the Champs-Elysees we found the Renault F1 Experience -- A dealership/museum/restaurantt. Inside was the trophy for the 2005 F1 Constructor's Championship as well as Fernando's winning car from last year.

Our fearless tour guide treated us to another interesting dinner at a place called, "Pain Vin Fromages" which translates to "Bread, Wine, Cheeses." It turned out to be a cozy fondu place. We had quite a good time embarrassing ourselves while our dipping cheese turned into cement and the waiter laughed at us.

It was a big suprize when we ended the night again back at the Great Canadian. A big crowd of Julie's friends were there. I met a girl from Germany, who met her French boyfriend in California and they used to eat at the restaurant where my brother worked while he was living out there. Small world. Bidding our new friends a good night we started the walk home. We thanked Julie for allowing us to come and visit her and for being such a good tour guide for us. Back at the hotel, we began the packing process as tomorrow we were going to be in a bit of a rush to get to the airport for the flight home.

Italy/Paris - Day 6

I believe this was my first experience shopping in a grocery store in a foreign country. It wasn't all that different from the stores at home, but the little things made it interesting. Trying to read product labels in a language you don't understand is not that easy to do. We picked out a couple bottles of local wine and headed to the cash register. When the guy behind the register asked us a question, we assumed it was the typical "paper or plastic?" and went with the smile and nod technique that we had perfected over the trip.

After checking out from the hotel, we jumped into a taxi to head back to the airport. Upon arrival, we joined a very long line to check-in for our flight. European airports are just dumb. Lucky for us we found a self-service kiosk with an Air France attendant standing next to it. She spoke enough English to help us get our tickets and we managed to skip the line.

Landing in Paris, we prepared ourselves for our first solo subway ride. When Julie picked us up on the first morning, we were pretty tired and out of it. I had tried to take mental notes at the time, and now was time to find out if we could retrace our steps. Lucky for us we managed to make it on the right train and even changed trains once to end up back at Julie's place. Here we took a short break to prepare for our cross town trek to the hotel where we'd be spending our last couple of nights.

I'm sure the sight of us dragging our luggage across the Garden of Tuileries was quite the site. I was battling an extremely large and heavy suitcase affectionately dubbed, "The Behemoth." How we managed to check this bag at the airport and not get charged for it when the scale went upwards of 54 lbs. is beyond me.

We finally found our hotel and got checked in. The place was nice, but extremely small. But we didn't care, we dropped our bags and decided to scope out our new surroundings. We were staying in a nice part of town just north of the Louve. There were many interesting stores and we found a few clothing designers' boutiques. With the sun starting to go down, and some rain clouds on the horizon, we made our way the our new 'home away from home' to grab a bite to eat.

On the patio of the Great Canadian we ordered food as it began to rain. We ate and watched as couples walking along the river laughed and ran for cover. Being that it was ladies night at the TGC, we decided to hang out there and wait for Julie to meet us for some drinks. We sat at the bar and watched Sex in the City until the rain let up and we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

Italy - Day 5

We enjoyed the complementary breakfast at the hotel before making our way across the street to the train station. Turns out a lot more people ride the train on Sunday morning than during Saturday afternoon. We were greeted with a swarm of people and long lines at the ticket windows. After getting our tickets to Imola, we had to run to the platform to make the train. We used most of the 20 minute ride to catch our breath. We arrived to a bustling Imola as visitors made their way to the track. The residents all lined the streets in their Sunday's Best to watch the parade.

Entering the track, we made our way to our seats. On the way to Tosa we found the statue of Ayrton Senna along Tamburello marking the place of his death. Many folks were gathered taking pictures and saying barely audible prayers. It was quite humbling to see so many people making the pilgrimage to this site.

We continued on to our seats to find a sea of red. We were smack in the middle of Tifosi Country. From what I could tell, not only were we the only Americans around but we were the only ones not cheering for Ferrari.

The race itself was amazing. A first lap incident between Ide and Albers sent the Midland driver into the kitty litter doing barrel rolls right in our field of view:

I don't think I've ever seen an F1 race where the first and second place cars were battling for lead for as long as it occurred here. Fernando was constantly barking at Michael's heals for the last 2/3rds of the race. But we pretty much knew it was over when we saw on the TV that the Fernando pulled into the pits before Schumi. On the next lap the crowd around us rose to their feet all pointing to the TV as Michael was putting out of the pits, having completed his stop, and Fernando was making his way down the front strait. When the Ferrari sliced out directly in front of the Renault, the place erupted! The Tifosi went crazy as their driver had managed to keep the lead during the crucial pit stop, and was now in position to hold on to first place.

The last ~15 laps were a clinic on how to keep a car behind you without officially "blocking" - today's teacher: 7-time World Champion Michael Schumacher. The crowd would audibly gasp for breath every time that Fernando would stick his nose on the inside of Michale during the entrance to Tosa, and cheer loudly as the Ferrari would pull away out of the corner and defend the position.

Eventually Fernando blew it coming out of the Villeneuve chicane and the race was over. For the last ~2 laps, Michael had a >1.? second lead and was costing to victory. As he crossed the finish line to collect the checkered flag, the crowd around us went ballistic. People were waving their pony flags and spraying bottles of beer as the drivers came around on their cooldown lap.

We soon joined the swarm of people who entered the track to make the long walk back to the main entrance of the track. A group of folks were sifting through the kitty litter looking for pieces of Albers car to hock on eBay.

The train ride back to Bologna was quiet as people recovered from a long day in the sun. After another delicious Italian dinner enjoyed with some local wine. We made our way back to the hotel bar. There we had an awkward conversation with the bartender who spoke as much English as we spoke Italian. We asked where would be a good place to buy some local wine to take back with us. Using the concierge as a translator, he directed us to the local supermarket and said that would probably be the best place. Everything was closed for the night. But now we had a mission for the next morning before boarding the plane to head back to Paris.

Paris/Italy - Day 4

Seems we stayed at the Buddha Bar a little too long as the 7:00am alarm this morning came way too early. We were to catch an 11:00 flight to Bologna, Italy so that we could attend the Formula 1 race at Imola. Julie had told us horror stories about the inefficiency of the French airport. And when we got there, I was more than glad we arrived with plenty of time to navigate the mass chaos that was the check-in line.

Boarding the Air France flight, we were greeted by a group of ~15 American high school students on some sort of field-trip. Even in Europe we can't escape the stupidity of Americans. My favorite part is when the teacher/group leader asked the flight attendants if should could walk down the aisle while we were taxing to the runway so that she could take a count of the students. Why not do that before we're ready to go screaming down the runway in an attempt to deify gravity? Suppose one had been missing? I'll tell you right now... I wasn't going to let them go back to the gate to pick them up; I've got me some F1 to see!

We arrived in Bologna and hitched a taxi to our hotel. We stayed at the uber-modern UNA Hotel. We chose this place because it looked like a lot of fun and also because it was right across the street from the train station.

Bologna is a short 20 minute train ride from Imola where the race was being held. After checking in and scoping out the room, we made our way to the station to catch a ride to the track to go and watch qualifying for tomorrow's race. Without knowing any Italian, we managed to buy two round-trip train tickets to Imola and find which track (there were 11) our train was supposed to be on. We actually boarded the right train and were on our way. Kyle managed to grab some great shots of the Italian countryside out the window of the train.

Stepping off the train into Imola was like going through a timewarp. Narrow streets were lined with brick buildings. Elderly couples fully dressed up were milling about enjoying their favorite passtime of people watching. The bicycle was the main mode of transportation as bike zipped around the swarming visitors.

We managed to make the mile+ walk from the train station to the track. Unfortunately, qualifying had already begun and we were on the wrong side of the track from our seats. We found a GA section and sat down to watch the final session. After quali had ended we made our way to where are seats were so that we could watch some of the GP2 race.

Unfortunately all of the GP2 drivers that I knew had graduated to F1 this season, so we decided to go do some shopping at the team trailers. On the way we walked along the front straight to catch some pictures. It was surprising to me how much closer to the action one is able to get at this track compared to Indy. If I had to guess, I'd say we were 9 or 10 feet from the cars. Amazing.

A couple of the teams, including the home team Ferrari, had demo cars setup in the village, so we were able to get a closer look at the new areo packages for this year:

We made our way back to the Imola train station and headed back to Bologna to shower up and hit the town for dinner. The town square provided us with a nice restaurant where we ordered some wine and had a nice Italian dinner. An older gentlemen at the table next to us tried to say good evening and when we responded in horrible, butchered Italian, he asked us where we were from (in English no less). We responded that we were American and his eyes lit up. He began a long - hard to understand - story of a Polish invasion and how America helped by doing something-or-another. He then demonstrated how to make his favorite drink, a mixture of beer and "lemonade." Turns out that lemonade translates to 7-Up and when combined with beer, it tastes well. And makes a huge fizzy mess all over the table. Bidding our new friend a good night, we returned back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

Paris - Day 3

Since Kyle was smart enough to buy our tickets for the Louvre before we went, we were not afraid of the lines forming while we slept in a little on our third day. Our time in line at the Orsay was so enjoyable that we picked up some sandwiches to eat on our short walk across the river. When we arrived we learned that everyone gets to stand in line for a security check before entering the lobby to buy tickets and/or enter the Museum.

With the line surprisingly short, we sat in the square and finished our lunch. After entering, we headed directly towards the Denon wing to view the Louvre Trifecta, the Mona Lisa, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, and the Venus de Milo. While amazing to see the Trifecta, I personally found the large paintings by David to be very impressive. Specifically, The Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon I and the Crowning of the Empress Josaphine in Notre-Dame Cathedral on December 2, 1804.

After wondering around the Denon wing, I made Kyle help me find the Inverse Pyramide.

Since it was such a nice day outside, we sat by the pond in the Garden of Tuileries. We drank a beer and watched as children pushed wooden sailboats across the pond.

That night we change it up a little and hit the upscale and trendy Buddha Bar for dinner and cocktails. I enjoyed their Five Spice Barbequed Chicken as it was probably the best piece of chicken I've ever had. After our meal, we headed upstairs to enjoy the atmosphere while enjoying some drinks. As the evening progressed, a DJ began to spin some amazing house beats while including some impressive sitar loops in the background.

Paris - Day 2

Another exciting event happened today as well. While visiting the Eiffel Tower, I asked Kyle if she would marry me. 5 years ago - to the day - we met. And now, we're engaged.

We were really not prepared for what happens after you do get engaged though. Everyone gets to ask their favorite question, "have you set a date yet?" The answer: we haven't, but we'll be sure to let you know when we do.

Paris - Day 2

Still a little jet lagged, we slept in a little to try to clear away some of the leftover cobwebs. We decided to check out the Musee d'Orsay which we were told would suit our tastes a little more than the Louvre. We showed up around 11:30 and found a pretty long line.

We took a walk down the block to pick up some food to eat while we were in line. While eating somesandwichess from a nearby cafe, we started chatting with the girl that was in line in front of us. She wasoriginallyy from New Zeleand but was currently living inSwedenn and was taking some holiday time in Paris. Apparently, when people say they are "backpacking through Europe," they mean that they are moving there to live for a couple of years... Who knew?

The Orsay was great but by the time we made it to the top level where the Van Goghs and the Monets were located, we were pretty tired. After checking out the greatimpressionistt pieces they had, we headed back for a quick rest before Julie got home from work.

That afternoon we headed over to the Eiffel Tower to take some pictures and get a better look of the city from a different point of view; 115m above ground.

Seing the tower at dusk was great as they light it as well as every hour it begins to sparkle.

We decided to take a long walk along the river that night. It was great to see Paris all lit up and alive.

Paris - Day 1

Just a quick update. We made it to Paris. 8 hour plane ride + 25 minutes of sleep = tired travlers. After getting to Julie's apartment, we spent the whole day sleeping :(

After our tour guide got home from work, we hit the town. A quick walk down to Notre Dame and back a couple of blocks hit Julie's favorite bar, The Canadian. We were greeted in English with baseball on tv. a good way to ease into the new culture.